A developer asks to pull two billion gallons a year from a public lake — and when someone asks why, they've got nothing. If you're just joining us, the local data center fights have moved past broad moratoriums and land-use maps. Now it's project-by-project scrutiny: power, water, public notice, community impact. Lately, the Digital Gateway project collapsed after the last developer pulled its appeal; Doña Ana County found Project Jupiter out of compliance over water supply; and in De Soto, Kansas, residents pushed back after Beale Infrastructure's project nearly doubled from its original design. This is The Data Center Daily — and today, the water question stops being a footnote. Cedar Creek, Dubuque, Palm Springs, plus an Oklahoma tariff heading for a slow November decision. Buckle up. Oklahoma Energy Today, with Jerry Bohnen:
The utility filed its request in June seeking to establish a “tariff applicable to large load customers. “The request, as outlined in the filing coincides with the enactment of House Bill 2992 which requires electric utilities to establish and maintain separate tariffs for large load customers “and to ensure that such customers pay the costs fairly allocable to them and commit to a minimum term of service.”
This is OG&E's large-load tariff. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission voted 3-0 Thursday — but only on the scaffolding: scheduling, newspaper notice, a protective order. The actual rate comes early November. Three-nothing to publish a notice in the newspaper. Riveting. Meanwhile the load's either interconnecting or it isn't, and the clock runs till November. The number to watch is 75 megawatts and up. OG&E says it's seeing rising interest from customers at or above that. And this filing has something the Duke and Portland General fights didn't: a statute behind it. Oklahoma's House Bill 2992 actually mandates the separate large-load tariff and a minimum service term. I’ll give them that part — the utility didn’t just dream up a minimum bill to protect ratepayers; the legislature told them to do it. But it's the same slow-roll as North Carolina, just in a different state. So what's already queuing up while everyone waits on November? Because the megawatts don't pause for a hearing schedule. We've now clocked this pattern in a third jurisdiction — Oregon, North Carolina, now Oklahoma. Utilities are all reaching for a floor under heavy load at once. It's contagious. Somebody's going to eat the fixed costs of that buildout, and the whole fight is just whether it's the hyperscaler or the guy running his AC in Oklahoma City in August. Here's Ashley Cook at Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
Plans for a data center in Henderson County are apparently on hold for now after the developer did not provide justification for a request to pull a maximum of nearly 2 billion gallons of water a year from Cedar Creek Lake.
Diode Ventures asked for up to 5 million gallons a day off Cedar Creek Lake — nearly 2 billion gallons a year — and when somebody said, hey, justify that, they had nothing. Project goes on hold. That goes way beyond a paperwork snag. And it's Tarrant Regional Water District's lake — one of four sources feeding Fort Worth, Arlington, Mansfield. So this cooling draw would've been lining up right behind actual cities. Right, and Diode already got told no once — the West Cedar Creek MUD stalled, so they went straight to Tarrant. When your first water district balks, that tells you something. The detail that matters: the opposition leader says she's seen evidence in recent days that it may still be moving. So when the developer says "on hold," treat that as the developer's claim rather than a settled status. And that's the whole game. If it restarts, who's re-running the water math? Because they couldn't produce it the first time anyone asked. Here's AOL:
According to emails and documents obtained by Dallas attorney Ashley Cook under the state’s public-information law, it was expected to take 12 years to fully build out the data center complex. In its first year, the facility would use an estimated 1.5 million gallons per day of lake water.
Diode Ventures asked for a maximum pull of nearly 2 billion gallons a year out of Cedar Creek Lake — 5 million gallons a day by year five, scaling toward 20 million. And when someone asked them to justify the number? Nothing. Couldn't do it. And notice the water source being tapped here — Cedar Creek is one of four sources Tarrant uses to supply Fort Worth, Arlington, Mansfield. We're talking about city water supply. Right, and the sequence tells you everything. They hit the West Cedar Creek MUD first, talks stall, so they go over its head straight to Tarrant. When the small district balks, you shop the bigger one. The documents came out through a public-records request by Dallas attorney Ashley Cook — credit where it's due, because none of this scaling was volunteered. A 12-year buildout, and the water math only surfaced under the open-records law. And here's my problem with the phrase "on hold." The opposition leader says she's seen evidence it's still moving. So I wouldn't treat the developer's "on hold" as the last word. If it restarts — who re-runs the two-billion-gallon math? Greater Palm Springs Business Insider writes:
Coachella, Indio and Desert Hot Springs have halted new data center development amid concerns over power, water and public health. Yet the region’s electricity costs may be an even more formidable barrier to the hyperscale projects sweeping other parts of the country.
Three Coachella Valley cities — Coachella, Indio, Desert Hot Springs — slammed the door within weeks. And here's the kicker: Indio banned data centers when there wasn't even an application on file. That's a city bracing for the punch before anyone's thrown it. The backlash has been moving east to west all week, and now it's parked in the desert. But the detail to sit with is the regional electricity rate: it may have already killed the economics before any zoning board voted. Right — so the grid people won by accident. The market said no, the developers ran the math, and the ban is basically a formality on a corpse. Rare setup, though. Usually local policy and market economics are pulling against each other. Here they're pointed the same direction — the moratorium and the power bill both saying hyperscale doesn't pencil in the Coachella Valley. And that's the part nobody says out loud. If the rate had been cheap, all the water and public-health concern in the world wouldn't have stopped a hyperscaler with a checkbook. Money moved first. The politics just showed up to take a victory lap. Here's KCRG:
A Florida-based real estate company has contacted the City of Dubuque to discuss connecting a possible data center to city water and sanitary sewer systems, a move that would require city council approval.
Okay, so after Cedar Creek's two billion gallons, Dubuque's numbers actually read modest — 3 million gallons to charge a closed-loop system, then 250,000 gallons a year to top it off. That's the cooling design doing its job. Right, and that ratio matters — the 3 million gallons is a one-time fill rather than an annual draw. Karis is a Florida real estate company looking at land east of the Dubuque Regional Airport, per public records TV9 obtained. But here's the catch — there's no formal application. No annexation petition, no site plan, no utility request. They called the city to chat about water and sewer hookups, and the county's already got a 12-month moratorium running. So the city council is being asked to weigh in on utility connections before there's any land-use framework to hang those connections on. City and county are both drafting ordinances while an active inquiry's sitting on the desk. And that's the split-jurisdiction trap. County says moratorium, developer goes knocking on the city's water department instead. Different door, same building. If you follow the infrastructure behind AI, try Musk v Altman Daily — a daily court-watch on Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, covering testimony, exhibits, and the AGI governance fight. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
What we’re watching next: Oklahoma Corporation Commissioners have set November 3rd for a decision on OG&E’s extra-large-load tariff request. And in Dubuque, input sessions on the city’s data center ordinance are scheduled for July 21st and July 27th at the Grand River Center.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, if you want to dig further. That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.